


The Door

by purpletoedmonster



Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: Death of Women, Gen, Revenge, Season 1 episode 5/6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 12:03:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/849345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purpletoedmonster/pseuds/purpletoedmonster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Annie's thoughts after Mitchell has been attacked and her door is gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Door

Annie’s left Mitchell and George at the hospital, letting George have first watch to make sure Herrick or one of his lackeys doesn’t come back for Mitchell. She briefly realizes that she’s never rent-a-ghosted so far before. 

She’s facing the door, her back to the sitting room. She doesn’t so much as take a breath before she turns around and sees that her door is gone. She’s missed her flight. But she can’t leave, not with Mitchell having been staked right in front of her, not with him in the hospital with nurses and doctors confused over his condition, and not with him not healing as fast as expected. 

George didn’t understand why she was willing to go through the door when she didn’t know what was waiting for her on the other side—she can’t tell him about the men with ropes and sticks. She doesn’t want to scare him. He’s always so scared; he doesn’t need this added on to his already heavily loaded shoulders.

But Owen...

Owen was another story. She wanted him scared. She wanted him sorry for what he did.

He’d taken everything from her, and nothing she’d done had affected him! He’d sneered at her, laughed, and still he had power over her. How was it that he could kill her and still have power over her even now, when he couldn’t even touch her, hurt her? It was almost worse than what she’d gone through while she was alive. If not for George, she’d still likely be laying desolate on the couch.

Maybe it was while they were storming the vampires’ funeral parlour, dragging Mitchell out of there by force (even though he’d come to his senses by then, otherwise she would have dragged him out by his hair if she’d had to) but she realized that maybe nothing she’d tried to say or do to Owen had worked because it wasn’t believable, that it was a tad dramatic.

Maybe the simple truth would do the trick.

He’d come in to their home mocking them. Annie had tried to warn him, but he just didn’t get the message. Maybe making it clear to him that if her ghost has remained...then what else exists out there in the big bad world? His grubby little murder was nothing compared to the pure ferocity of George on a full moon, nor to the decades of cold-blooded killing of Mitchell. He thought he was bulletproof? Oh, Owen, sweetie, you’re with the wild things now, and this werewolf, this vampire, and this ghost knew what he was, and they would follow him to the ends of the earth.

And that wasn’t even the very worst thing. No...the worst thing is something only the dead, and those who had glimpsed into death, would know. As she’d whispered in his ear the things she’d seen she could practically feel the air vibrating with his shaking. He’d run out the front door, his whole world shaken to its very foundations. He was finally scared. She almost didn’t care if he actually felt guilty for her death, for the life he’d stolen from her, the opportunities; she almost didn’t care if he gave himself up to the police. He would never be the same after this. He would always be looking over his shoulder, always scared of what could be waiting for him. 

She almost felt bad when his terror brought her door to her.

***

Mitchell is home by the next evening. She doesn’t ask how he’s gotten so much better after how much he was struggling just last night. George doesn’t either, and by the time Mitchell has been settled into his bed, George has gone off to work and it’s only Annie and Mitchell.

She wonders if he’s going to ask her why she didn’t just go through the door when she had the chance like George did, but it’s quiet, broken only by his breathing. She watches his chest rise and fall in a rhythm that she knows is forced, unneeded. Her eyes rise to his face, where his eyes are closed and his eyebrows furrowed. 

The words are spilling out of her before she can even properly think them. “Have you ever had a ghost haunt you?”

Mitchell’s eyes snap open, but he doesn’t really look confused.

“I wouldn’t know if I’d call it ‘haunting’, but...yeah.” He’s quiet, but he doesn’t look away from her. He’s not hiding. 

She doesn’t say anything, and doesn’t break eye contact. She’s not sure what to say, but it seems that Mitchell understands where her question is coming from.

“Sometimes I’d be sitting there, floating on the high, listening to the last beats of their hearts, and I’d see their doors out of the corner of my eye. Some of them would go through. Sometimes I was too blood-drunk to even notice.” At this he looks ashamed. “I don’t know what’s happened to the ones who didn’t go through. I usually didn’t hang around the places where they’d—” his eyes widen a fraction, struggling with how to describe their endings—“been killed.” He swallows.

Annie thinks about what it could have been like if she was still struggling to understand what exactly she was still here to do. It didn’t help that she hadn’t even remembered Owens’ part in her death, but it’s unlikely any of the girls Mitchell’s killed would have had the same problem—not when their ghosts appeared while he was still drenched with their blood and their bodies at his feet. But if she couldn’t have gotten to him, would she have been stuck here forever? Would she have directed her anger at other people if she couldn’t get to him? What kind of existence would that have been?

“I’ve wondered about it, Annie, so many times.” Mitchell’s dark voice breaks her negative thoughts, brings her back to the gloomy bedroom. His eyes are shining, as they so often are.

“It’s not enough that I killed them, took them away from their families and all their opportunities!” His voice is rough but quiet gravel. “But then I have to think of the girls who didn’t move on! Who stayed here, feeling angry and betrayed, and not able to even get to me. I dunno what’s happened to them, if I really was their unfinished business or not, if the places they were killed in even still stand. It gets to be too much sometimes. That’s when it’s hardest to not go back, because the blood helps you forget, keeps you numb.”

Mitchell breathes hard and Annie is still on her bedside chair. She’s thinking about what Mitchell’s said, but also about what George asked her earlier in the hospital.

“It wasn’t only Owen that had me wanting to finish my unfinished business, Mitchell, although I assure you that last evening was very satisfying,” she says with a mischievous smile, getting a quirk of a lip from him as well. “But...well, my door is gone now. I don’t know if it will come back. Do I have a ‘new’ bit of unfinished business, what?”

“I dunno, Annie. I’ve never heard of a ghost turning down Death’s door.”

She huffs a breath and crosses her arms over her chest. “Why didn’t I get some sort of manual or something when I died? If death was going to be this difficult I should think they’d give us some knowledge about what we’re supposed to do and how to go about it!”

Mitchell chuckles and Annie smiles. She doesn’t quite know how to go about comforting Mitchell, if he should be comforted, and there comes the guilt...

She wonders how many ghosts there are out there like her, who’ve been hurt by a man in their lives, who couldn’t move on from that trauma. She wonders how many of them have been able to set right the wrong that was done to them. Mitchell was right—it is too much to think about.

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually what I wrote for my final creative project for my 'Gender and Horror' english/women's studies class. The marks should be submitted by now, so hopefully I don't get marked as my project being plagiarized!


End file.
